CARSON, Calif. (Tuesday, April 19th, 2011) – Chivas USA announced today that it has decided to decline the option to use its position in the MLS allocation order to acquire United States National Team midfielder Benny Feilhaber and will keep the top spot in the allocation order.

Feilhaber signed an MLS contract on Friday, and per the league’s allocation order regarding United States National Team players coming to MLS, Chivas USA had the first option to acquire the player.

Chivas USA Head Coach Robin Fraser released the following statement regarding the club’s decision:

“This was a really difficult decision because we had to look at a number of factors, first and foremost being if we take him and accommodate his salary within our salary cap, how much is that going to limit us going forward. Certainly we’re looking to address some needs on the team, and having Benny would’ve been great in our midfield, because he’s a very, very good player, but the fact of the matter is his salary would’ve been so high that we wouldn’t have been able to make any adjustments going forward. The summer window coming up is an important time for us and we’d like to position ourselves to make some moves that we think are going to further improve our team.”

“It was a difficult decision to pass on Benny, but we just feel that we have more needs than the one person could’ve addressed, and his salary would have inhibited our ability to make improvements that we think we need. Benny’s salary, given where we are, was not something that we were going to be able to take on, and so we then felt like it was important that we retain this number one allocation because as players come back through this mechanism, we will have first choice at getting them.”

“Our only concern is what’s best for the club, and to make this a successful team that’s vying for championships year in and year out, so we were listening to offers for trades. Having this number one spot in the allocation is definitely an asset, not only because of the player you can get but the potential moves that you can make with it. So in the last 36 hours it’s been looking at every possible scenario that we thought would benefit us, and as unbelievable as it may sound, it seemed like this was the best move for the long term benefit of the club.”

Fraser will be available for further comment following tomorrow’s practice at The Home Depot Center.